Image Backup 0MB total partition to de-select

Oftentimes when defining an Image Backup job (Scheduled or Manual), NovaBACKUP will detect that a partition exists when it does not actually exist. This is called a false positive or "ghost" partition. If this is the case and your image backup job is attempting to image that non-existent partition then the image backup job will fail just because that partition does not actually exist. Your image backup job can be failing simply because when the image job was created and you selected your source drives and partitions to include in the image backup, that one of the partitions was 0MB in size and that partition did not actually exist on the disk. This is considered a "ghost" partition and does not really exist on the hard drive(s) that you are selecting for including in your image. You can confirm your hard disk layout by running the built-in Windows "Disk Management" tool; help on that tool is here.

In your list of drives and partitions to image, when you go to create a new Image Backup job, inside Home -> "Image Backup" area, look for any partitions that show as 0MB in size.

It appears that you are using NovaBACKUP to perform an Image Backup of the entire Disk 0 internal hard drive and that internal hard drive in your case probably contains a small Recovery partition and a C: drive, probably two total actual and valid partitions. Since you are only imaging the entire Disk 0 this means that you have 3 partitions on Disk 0 but our software may think that you have one additional partition which doesn't ACTUALLY exist however NovaBACKUP thinks you have it in place which will cause the image backup to fail once it attempts to image that partition which doesn't exist, prior to the C: drive portion of the image. I have a feeling that when you created your Image Backup job that it showed one additional partition then what it actually contains, this would be an extra partition that shows as existing on Disk 0 and it was probably named "System Reserved" and was showing as "Partition (System Reserved) Total: 0MB Free: 0MB". If you see this in the list of partitions to select in Image Backup then you know this is not a real partition to not select it for imaging. The way that you can confirm this is by opening Disk Management tool built in to Windows (all versions of Windows has this tool); for help on that tool clickhere. Go to Start button and search for "Disk Management" or "Create and format hard disk partitions" to launch the Disk Management tool which will show you exactly how many real partitions you have. Count how many partitions exist on Disk 0 to then determine in NovaBACKUP's Image Backup tool what partitions to select from in setting up your new Image Backup job.

The 0MB total partition that is showing in NovaBACKUP, when you go to create a new Image Backup job, is not a real partition and will require un-checking/de-selecting that partition from the selection list in order for image backup to work for you without erroring out early in to the job. You will need to re-create your Image Backup job and de-select that "0MB" partition from the list of 4 partitions so that only the 3 partitions that really exist are selected for including in the image on the selection screen for what to image. You will delete the old image job or overwrite the old image job if you wish. Now run the newly created Image Backup job and see if it gets beyond 3 minutes 50 seconds and can complete successfully.

Also note that if you are doing both Full Image Backup and Differential or Incremental Image Backup then you are required to complete the Full Image Backup job first and it has to complete 100% before you can run the Differential or Incremental Image Backup job.

Also note that we do not support USB hard drives connected via a USB hub, if that is the case take the USB hub out of the equation and directly connect the USB hard drive to a USB port on the actual PC before attempting image backup. Also note that USB hard drives, used as destination storage devices, 2TB or larger in physical size need to have partition style = GPT (GUID) and not MBR. A guide on that is linked below:

In reading the description of your issue or by reviewing your log set we have discovered that your destination storage device is a hard drive, most likely a USB external, which does not contain a GPT (GUID) partition style, most likely it is using MBR. The article describing this requirement is titled "NovaBACKUP GPT Requirement Guide". NovaBACKUP has a requirement for destination storage device hard drive(s) to have a particular partition style set on it, that partition style is called GPT (GUID). You either currently have an MBR partition style on that hard drive or by viewing your log set it was undetermined as to if that drive is MBR or GPT.

Article text:

NovaBACKUP's requirement is a hard drive, used as the destination storage device, larger than 2TB require GPT (GUID) partition style, otherwise backups will fail. This is a requirement of the software if the destination storage device hard drive is 2TB or larger in physical size. This requirement typically has a greater effect on Image based backups more than File based backups, which means that your non-Image based backups may have been working fine without the GPT setting in place on the destination storage device.

Question:

Does NovaBACKUP software work with hard drives that are 2TB or larger in size?

Answer:

Yes. NovaBACKUP supports drives that are 2TB or larger in size, but those drives must be converted to GPT (GUID partition table) partitions as Windows has a limit of 2TB partition using MBR (Master Boot Record).

WARNING: DO NOT CONNECT YOUR USB HARD DRIVE TO A USB HUB, DIRECTLY CONNECT THE USB DRIVE DIRECTLY TO A USB PORT ON THE PC. NovaBACKUP does not support connecting a USB hard drive through a USB hub. This will cause backup errors to occur and most likely will cause the backup job to stop mid-way through.

If you seem to have trouble with USB external hard drive disconnecting or going to sleep prior to, during or after a backup follow this guide to disable various Windows sleep settings that might be enabled and causing interruption:

It may be that your USB destination storage device is going to sleep at some point either during the backup job or after. Make sure that Sleep mode is turned off for the USB port devices in "Control Panel -> Device Manager -> Universal Serial Bus controllers" area. Click on each device under that section and check if there is a Power Management tab that exists in each device and if it does, then in each case, un-check the "Allow the computer to turn off this device.." property in each case and click OK to save that change.

Next in the Windows Power Options (Power Management) area, "Control Panel -> Power Options" click on Advanced to go to the Advanced Power Management options, you may have to click on "Change plan settings" on the plan that you are using and then after that click "Change advanced power settings". Locate the "USB settings" section and then expand that section. Disable the "USB selective suspend setting" to set it to "Disabled" instead of the default which is "Enabled". Now locate the "Hard disk" section and disable the "Turn off hard disk after" setting so that it is set to "0" which is disabled. Now locate the "Sleep" section and disable all of the Sleep settings here to set them all to disabled for testing purposes.